President's Report to the Board of Trustees (October
11, 2002)

Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, colleagues, and friends, it is a great
pleasure to open this report with heartfelt thanks to all of the members
of the UVM family—Board members, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and
friends—who have made me and Rachel so welcome in our new community and
who have made our first hundred days at the University of Vermont (a milestone
that we attained this Tuesday, October 8) so happy and fulfilling.

We and our colleagues here at UVM have been extraordinarily busy in the
eight weeks that have elapsed since the last Board meeting. It was a thrill
to see the move-in of our new students, assisted by 400 volunteers on
August 23, one week after our last Board meeting. Colleagues in Student
Affairs designed what promises to be a terrific new tradition, a candlelight
induction ceremony for the first-year class, which was attended by the
vast majority of our 1750 first-year students on August 25. The ceremony
concluded with hundreds of students signing a commitment to the UVM ideal
of Our Common Ground—a commitment to a truly diverse community, dedicated
to respect, integrity, innovation, openness, justice, and responsibility.
Week after week saw similarly signal events: the University Convocation
on September 3, a moving and essential nondenominational memorial organized
by UVM students on September 11, a staff recognition luncheon on the lawn
by the Fleming Museum the following week that drew in the neighborhood
of 900 colleagues on a beautiful afternoon, and then, last week, a thrilling
Homecoming Weekend with some 2,500 registrants—alumni, parents, and friends—enjoying
scores of events, many of them sold out, like the a capella concerts in
Ira Allen Chapel, the play in Royal Tyler, and the season opener hockey
game in Gutterson. The one week that was not marked by a major event here
in Burlington saw a reception that drew nearly two hundred alumni and
friends in Manhattan, followed the next day by a very successful meeting
of the National Campaign Steering Committee. On all of these occasions,
and on many others, we were impressed and buoyed by the vitality, optimism,
and commitment to the University that seemed in every quarter to be energizing
the UVM community.

In my Convocation Address early last month, I called on all members of
the University community to weave a fabric of care and of high expectations
of ourselves and each other at the University of Vermont. Everywhere,
we see high expectations being set and met, and we are deeply impressed
by the acumen and quality exemplified in a myriad of activities by our
colleagues, students, and alumni. Among the achievements and milestones
we would not wish to see go unnoted in the last eight weeks I would cite,
especially, the following:

The approval by the UVM Board, the Trinity College Board, and the Mercy
Council of a purchase and sale agreement that should eventuate in a closing
for UVM’s purchase of the Trinity College campus, a great short-term
asset for the University and an even greater on in the hundred-year view—specials
kudos on the Trinity acquisition are due to Provost Bramley, Vice President
Gustafson, Professor John Evans, and our terrific General Counsel, Fran
Bazluke;

The forwarding to the Faculty Senate for review this fall of a plan
for the establishment of a University-wide Honors College that we believe
is extraordinarily well designed to draw increasing numbers of high-achieving
students to UVM and to offer them very substantial academic enrichment,
with kudos to Vice Provost Lauck Parke and, especially, to the members
of the faculty and the deans who worked closely with Lauck to carry
the Honors College proposal to its current state of development (among
others, Professors Robert Taylor, Robert Ullrich, Douglas Johnson, Carl
Newton, Pat Reed, Ross Thomson, Lyndon Carew, Jane Lawrence, and Roger
Cooke, and Deans Joan Smith, Don DeHayes, and Rachel Johnson);

The very significant improvement in UVM’s first-to-second year retention
rate, from 82% in the fall of 2001 to 84.3% in the fall of 2002, a tribute
to the strong class that entered in the fall of 2001 and to the many
faculty and staff who worked hard to build rising student satisfaction,
achievement, and persistence at UVM;

UVM’s 31-point jump in Kiplinger’s triannual ranking of colleges
and university for value for price, including a top twenty ranking among
Kiplinger’s top one hundred institutions in the four-year graduation
rate, keeping company in that category with the nation’s finest public
flagship institutions, including the University of Virginia, the University
of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois,
and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill—with the serious Kiplinger
ranking bolstered by news that was gratifying despite our putting little
stock in the source—UVM’s completely dropping off the Princeton Review’s
top party school list;

The forging of what many observers believe will come to be seen as
a historic agreement between the University of Vermont and the City
of Burlington to address, cooperatively and aggressively, issues in
town-gown relations surrounding student behavior and quality of life
in the neighborhoods around the campus;

The wonderful medal just received by the UVM Department of Police Services
for community policing, bestowed on Chief Gary Margolis, his officers,
and support personnel by the International Association of Chiefs of
Police last week;

The $7.4 million dollar NSF grant to the Vermont Mathematics Partnership,
aimed at math instruction throughout the state of Vermont and led by
UVM Professor of Mathematics Ken Gross;

Coverage in the course of the last eight weeks of the work of multiple
UVM researchers in national media, including the New York Times, the
Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian of London, England,
the St. Louis Dispatch, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, journals ranging
from Time and Forbes to Science, and National Public Radio, featuring,
among others, Professors Robert Costanza, Jams Peterson, Gregory Gause,
James Rathmell, John Seyller, Nick Danigelis, and Dean (and Professor)
Rachel Johnson;

Favorable reactions throughout the Vermont press to such UVM stories
as the resurgence of Canadian Studies and the commitment of the University
to invest in engineering programs in order to build R&D capacity
for the State of Vermont;

As we work together to raise the competitive metabolism of our wonderful
university, it is essential that we expect the best of ourselves and of
each other. It is especially important that as educators we expect and
demand high performance from our students. I have been deeply gratified
to find enthusiasm for the University of Vermont running very high among
our students, but I’ve also had encounters from time to time—as I did
with two students in the course of Homecoming Weekend—in which students
told me that they are not challenged and stretched as much as they would
like in their first-year classes. As we bring increasing numbers of academically
high-flying students into UVM—larger numbers in every successive class
who rival the best and brightest who have stood out in every cohort of
students to come to UVM, like the 26 Green and Gold Scholars who entered
this fall (marking UVM’s successful recruitment of just over a third of
the top high school students in Vermont!)—it is essential that the faculty
respond by offering all of our undergraduates a challenging, invigorating
immersion in the life of the mind.

In short, we should be striving to challenge and engage all of our students
like honors students. Without question, the intensive process of exploring
the creation of an Honors College is a key step toward invigorating the
intellectual climate of undergraduate education—and also, Provost Bramley
and I hope, an important pilot process for the larger task of addressing
curricular cohesiveness across all of our undergraduate programs: after
all, ripeness is all, as we read in King Lear, and it is high time that
this university got on with completing the important work on a core curriculum
begun by the Committee on Baccalaureate Education during the Lattie Coor
administration virtually a generation ago. It is important to note, please,
that the Faculty Senate has yet to approve sending the proposed Honors
College forward for consideration by the Board of Trustees. We must not
take faculty approval for granted. Accordingly, I cannot be more urgent
in urging our faculty colleagues to give this well conceived proposal
a favorable reception. Let’s take special care not to make the perfect
the enemy of the good: with resolution and boldness, we can launch an
exciting Honors College next fall that will be a critical tool for advancing
undergraduate education at UVM and also for helping us to sustain the qualitative
improvement in the student body that has been so dramatic over the course
of the past year.

Just as we must have expectations in our activities in undergraduate education,
we need to raise the competitive metabolism of UVM by refocusing and intensifying
our efforts in graduate education, especially at the doctoral level. Again,
I am calling on the provost, the deans, and the faculty to undertake a
very difficult task-to take a hard look at reducing the number of graduate
programs at UVM: with a graduate enrollment of some 1,100, it simply doesn't
make sense to offer 92 graduate degree programs, one degree program for
every twelve graduate students. It doesn't make sense economically, and
it doesn't make sense programmatically in terms of building the critical
mass for truly distinguished graduate programs. At the same time, to sustain
UVM's marvelous position in American higher education as the nation's
smallest genuine research university, we must have a more intensive effort
in graduate education, increasing the enrollment of advanced students,
but concentrating that enrollment in a somewhat smaller number of better
focused and better supported degree programs.

There are a number of pressing imperatives that I believe the campus community
must embrace as challenges that we will surmount together with determination
and with joy. Among those imperatives, I count as especially important
the following:

The imperative to set clear objectives for the University as a whole
and for every academic department and support unit-and to create a climate
of accountability for achieving those objectives;

The imperative to build solid financial strength by increasing public
and private support and by ensuring that the operation of the University
is highly efficient and facilitative of success for a diverse community
of students, faculty, and staff;

The imperative to advance academic programs on the undergraduate,
graduate, and professional levels and to attain significant increases
in the quality and quantity of research, scholarship, and creative activity;

The imperative to promote higher levels of student success, achievement,
and satisfaction, inside and outside the classroom; and

The imperative to communicate effectively, internally and externally.

I have been giving a great deal of thought to the way in which I would
like my administration to be organized in order to advance the University
as effectively as possible as we seek to respond to these imperatives.
Early next week, I am aiming to announce to the University community
a plan for restructuring the central administration that will entail
a number of new and reconceptualized positions-but no growth, you may
be assured, in the total number of personnel. It is not too early to
say, however, that we are launching searches for several key positions,
including a Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School
and a Vice President for Finance and Administrative Services-nor is
it too early to say that these will be national searches with a very high
premium placed on advancing the University's critical goals in diversity
and in the pursuit of excellence-goals that, as I have argued elsewhere,
including in the Convocation Address-are inextricably linked with each
other.

In all of my encounters with members of the UVM family far and wide, I
have been deeply impressed with the commitment people have to the University
of Vermont. It was only after the last Board meeting that I completed
the Vermont travels that took me all over our fascinating state in my
first two months on campus. I found an enormous appetite across the
State for a vital, productive relationship with a University in which
Vermonters can take great pride, and a deepening recognition of the
value to Vermonters of having a flagship research institution that serves
as a center of innovation and problem-solving, as a driver of economic
development and social well-being, and as the portal of access for the
people of the State to a university education at the highest competitive
national level. On campus, my deepening acquaintance with our students
provides more examples every day of their commitment to their own growth,
intellectually and personally, and to their extraordinary quality as
scholars and as human beings deeply engaged in the welfare of their University,
the communities in which they live, and the larger society. I have also
been deeply impressed with the leadership our students have shown in
working with our colleagues in Student Affairs to develop more rewarding
programming on the campus, including more late-night activities, from
concerts like the Jurassic 5 gig in the Patrick Gymnasium that drew
2,800 students to late-night movies in the Cook Commons and open mike
coffee houses in the North Lounge of Billings. Students have been key
players in our efforts to assess and improve the student experience
on campus, and I urge all students to follow the lead of our outstanding
SGA leaders by becoming actively engaged in this process.

As for our faculty and staff, I cannot say enough about how grateful I
am for the enthusiasm, the commitment, the genuine passion for advancing
UVM, and the quality that I see exemplified again and again in the work
of countless colleagues. As for my closest colleagues in leadership
at the institutional level, led by Provost Bramley and the rest of the
top administrative team, I have boundless confidence that the University
will be in good hands whenever-and increasingly-I am engaged in the
critical tasks you hired me to take on as UVM's president, many of which-for
instance the Comprehensive Campaign to raise private funds to support
our enterprise better, with special emphasis on building resources to
provide our faculty and students with the resources they so richly deserve-will
take me increasingly off campus and, often, out of Vermont. In fact,
I have concluded that the University will realize its highest return
on investment if I devote something on the order of at least half of
my time to the Campaign in the next few years, and I am eager for the
imperative for my doing so to be well understood by everyone in the campus
community, so that students, staff, and faculty alike will understand
why it is not only appropriate but also absolutely essential that I
not be available for every event and every meeting where you might have
like to have seen the president in an earlier era. Accordingly, I hope
you will accept with pleasure and with the high confidence in them that
I have come to have that as often as not-probably more often than not-you
will encounter my colleagues in my place.

Finally, one of my primary aims since my appointment was announced last
winter has been to invigorate the intellectual and cultural life of
the campus for students and faculty. Drawing on bequests to the University
available for one-time use in the President's Discretionary Fund, we
are going to create a President's Lecture Series designed to bring to
campus, in response to competitive proposals from faculty, twelve to
fifteen lecturers every year who represent the best that is thought
and known in disciplines across the campus. Presidential lecturers will
be members of the national academies, Nobel Prize winners, and others
of similarly high attainment. They will be asked to make two presentations
in the course of their visits, one a major lecture designed for the general
public and one a departmental symposium designed especially for students
and faculty within each lecturer's discipline. The visits will also
feature special occasions when the Presidential Lecturers interact with
students without competition from faculty and staff. They will be designed
not only to expose the campus community to a steady stream of the intellectual
leaders of our time, but also to expose our visitors to the extraordinary
quality of the University of Vermont. I will be providing full details
of this exciting new program to the Faculty Senate when I meet with
them at their next meeting, this coming Monday afternoon.